Python Experiments in Physics and Astronomy

Padraig Houlahan recently retired from a career spanning both college teaching and IT management. He was the IT Director for Lowell Observatory for almost 17 years, and a systems analyst for Oregon State University before that. Prior to working in IT, Houlahan was an Assistant Professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, and after a career in IT, he returned to teaching Physics for ERAU.

• 1. Python and Object Oriented Design Notes. 2. Exploring Data. 3. Signals and Trends. 4. Gravity Fields and Mass Distributions. 5. Spiral Galaxies and Dark Matter. 6. Sampling a Distribution. 7. Projectiles – The German 88. 8. Rocket Launches. 9. Building a star catalog from an image. 10. Photometry: Measuring object brightness. 11. Aligning Images and Finding Targets. 12. The Saha Equation and the Balmer Spectrum. 13. Isochrons – The Ages of Rocks.

At last, an invaluable collection of software templates for practical problems in physics and astronomy written for students in the Python universe. Applications to aerodynamics, rocketry, and data fitting create a brilliant and rarely found merging across the boundaries of science and engineering. With tutorials, examples, and solutions, faculty will find this book to be an indispensable classroom resource for students at all levels.- Richard Binzel, Professor of Planetary Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), March 2025The leap from simple elegant equations in the physics classroom to deep physical intuition about the workings of complex systems requires experience and experimentation. In "Python Experiments in Physics and Astronomy", Padraig Houlahan provides a series of virtual laboratories in which the reader begins with a simple equation and uses it to explore complex behaviors. The combination of object-oriented programming structure with concrete physical situations allows the reader to intuitively modify the presented code and construct new experiments while building intuition for how each system works. Furthermore, Houlahan's examples provide the foundations for understanding how professional level software tools perform their calculations (e.g. the astronomical imaging chapters here demonstrate the underpinnings of the AstroPy image processing packages). This book is a must-have for science and engineering students both to gain physical intuition in a virtual laboratory setting and to develop basic skills in scientific computing.- Timothy Ellsworth-Bowers, Support Astronomer, Lowell Discovery Telescope, Lowell Observatory, April 2025